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"Meat" and potato pie

Last night's dinner included a tasty, fast, and easy dish. (I always remember Nigella saying that people often confuse fast and easy when it comes to cooking. Some dishes are quite easy, but people blow them off as being hard to make, because there may be some time involved. An example of that would be risotto, which involves a length of time standing in front of the stove, but is easy-peasy to make.) I'm not always a fan of using packaged foods, but they definitely have their place. And one of them is when you're tired and want to eat, and prefer to eat at home.

"Meat" and potato pie

Frozen hashbrowns ~ 4 cups
Olive oil ~ 3 tablespoons
Onion, 1 small, chopped
Smart Ground, 1 12-oz package
Tomato paste, most of a 6-oz can
Sloppy joe powder, 1 packet
warm water ~1 cup
Cheddar cheese, ~3/4 cup

Preheat oven to 425 F.
Defrost hashbrowns in microwave in glass pie dish. Add ~2 tbsp oil and smoosh it with your fingers until it's layered on the bottom and sides of the dish. Place in oven for 15-20 minutes.
Meanwhile, saute chopped onion in remaining oil. Once translucent, add Smart Ground, Sloppy Joe powder, water, and tomato paste. (Don't add these all at once, in case it's too much for the amount of Smart Ground. I ended up using the whole packet, but not all of the paste.) Mix together in pan until it looks uniform. Simmer a a few minutes.
Once potato shell is done, take out of oven and turn oven temp down to 350 F. Spread "meat" mixture on top of shell. Sprinkle cheese on top of that. (I chopped up some sliced cheese - easier than shredding it myself, without the cost and added preservatives of shredded cheese.) Put back in oven for about 20 minutes, or until cheese is nice and bubbly.

I think that when I make this in the future, I'll use a bigger dish and increase the proportion of potato, but everyone seemed to like it last night. The above was basically from cooks.com, with a couple of substitutions.

Posted by Shokufeh at January 25, 2007 09:44 PM